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Sennybridge 2004, United Kingdom (2004-09-06)

Sennybridge 2004, United KingdomSennybridge 2004, United Kingdom

It is never easy to compare events and games around the world, but when you
stumble upon the event of the year, you can't help but notice.
Forget the game
itself and look at the credentials of the organizers: Ex-SAS elites managing
one of the most prestigious military tactics training school in the UK, backed
by resources from the British military. When asked how such a spectacular event
could be put together on restricted grounds with access to military hardware,
the answer was obvious yet so true - "Its who you know". And for the
300+ people who attended the event, that translated into one dream weekend that
is difficult to top.

Located in the middle of the UK, Sennybridge is home to a secret military training
facility developed by the British government during the Balkan war. Constructed
on the lush rolling meadows of Wales, the training facility is a well maintained
Balkan village complete with a church and 28 buildings of various sizes.
It
is a complete village with houses, post offices, government offices, etc. There
is a main street running through the village, with many small side streets and
fenced off gardens and lawns that are attached to each house. The buildings
themselves look homely enough from the outside and are finished in clean grey
concrete on the inside. There are basements, underground tunnels, trap doors,
secret windows, attics, and a countless selection of nooks and crannies to hide
in. Outside on the street, remnants of old British tanks and APCs lie burnt
yet mysteriously dignified - almost as if guarding this ghost-town. A fully
furnished executive command center is located in the church tower - with large
spotless glass windows that offers a complete view of what is going on within
the entire village at any time. Networked loudspeakers are situated everywhere
at all points in the village, used to broadcast instructions and background
noise like tanks and explosions to increase the ambiance of war. Are you jealous
yet? You don't have to be since you too can join the fun. Read on. (Place your mouse cursor over photos for more commentary)

About The Organizers
The Ex-SAS outfit that hosts the Sennybridge event annually is The Stirling Services Group. Renowned for their professionalism and ability to hold extremely
authentic war scenarios, the Sennybridge game has been gaining international
status with players flying in from all over the world to attend. The 320 players
who attended were the lucky ones since registration was closed early to avoid
over-crowding the event. Future events will be announced on the Stirling Services
website so check for details and sign up early if you want to taste this for
yourself.
Stirling Services also provides specialized training classes for executives,
gamers, and law enforcement agencies from around the world. They have trained
units of the British law enforcement agency, members of the South Korean army,
and many weekend warriors who want to have a go at storming a jet-plane in a
terrorist response call! Stirling Services owns a large collection of buildings
for training, and our tour revealed many office buildings riddled with bullet
holes (yes, the real kind). Their programs are not cheap but definitely exclusive
and not for the faint of heart. For example, they offer a survival program where
students are sent into the woods with nothing more than a bottle of water, and
are hunted down by military trained operatives over 3 days. Once captured, they
undergo "torture" tests that test their limits. If that sounds like
a bit too much for you, then how about their 6-day para-training program that
lets you jump out of planes for insertion behind enemy lines?

Rest assured that you will get top-notch instruction. If in doubt, just review
the footage of SAS operatives storming the terrorist-held Iranian embassy in
London many years ago. You will see an SAS operative pasting explosives on a
window on the second floor, and then rushing in immediately after the windows
are blown out. That would be John McAleese, one of the instructors at Stirling
Services. And you need not be intimidated by these wholly serious instructors
- they are friendly and nice people who are eager to share their knowledge with
you.

Enviable Hardware
Held over 2 days from August 20 - 22, the event was nothing short of incredible.
RedWolf Airsoft sponsored and attended the game - and we must admit that it
is the best that we have ever seen. Of course, it helps that the game was held
in a military training facility. But the fact that enthusiasts like Curt and
James drove their authentic Humvees and Ferrets to be part of the game made
everything feel so much more real. Not to be outdone, Stirling Services arranged
a fully functional APC to participate in the missions. Fully armored and seating
10, the APC runs on tracks that rumble and shake as it roars through the middle
of the village. At any given moment, you can see John Mac's head sticking out
from the top as he commands the huge vehicle through town with the same ease
as many of us would drive a compact convertible! Curt's own Humvee is nothing
to sneeze at either - it is a fully restored Humvee that is painted with hard-to-get
US military paint (again, it's who you know). Originally starting life as part
of a US Marines unit in the UK, Curt bought the soft-top Humvee and spent 3
years restoring it and converting it into a hard-top. The result is amazing
and one cannot even tell that it is a decommissioned vehicle. A professional
race-car driver himself, Curt pilots the Humvee through rivers and up hills
courageously and sends most of us diving from the grab-handles.
The Ferret is
a very classy vehicle itself and owner James says it is a 1960's vehicle that
he bought and restored completely. With a pop-hatch on top for a gunner and
side-hatches for small-arms fire, the Ferret is fast and versatile - able to
climb hills and plough through water with ease. It's throaty engine rumbles
like a can of beans in your belly, allowing it to keep pace with the Humvee.
Not bad at all for a 45 year old piece of machinery!

Variety Is The Name Of
The Game
The Korean war. Americans (or the Yanks) are battling it out with the North
Koreans in a series of small battles to gain position in the long war. Each
side has their own Generals and Commanders, all denoted by specially colored
arm bands. With the benefit of a field with bunkers and trenches, coupled with
the full village, the game was afforded a great amount of variety - offering
jungle, field and city skirmishes. With the tunnels and trap-doors, guerilla
tactics were also possible. The Americans wore white arm-bands and the Koreans
wore yellow arm-bands, which worked fine during the day but could have worked
better at night when it was hard to tell the difference.

Basically there were two main parts of play - the day game and the night game.
The day game was held up in a rather large hill with long convoluted trenches,
piles of sandbags, stone bunkers, etc. The Americans had the uphill position,
while Koreans had to attach from underneath. Playing on the Korean side and
working uphill, the words from "Sun Tze's Art of War" kept ringing
in my head - "The higher ground will always be advantageous". I guess
Sun Tze was right because the Americans creamed the Koreans. Sitting down at
the re-spawn point at the bottom of the hill, an endless stream of 30-40 "Koreans"
would steadily walk back. It was a massacre as the Americans lay fortified in
their high bunkers and deep trenches looking down upon us.
Frustrated at our
inability to break through, I charged up the hill and came upon a small trench
where an enemy lay. We exchanged full auto fire from a distance of 5 feet before
he ducked into the trench. Thinking that he retreated to wind his magazine,
I charged forward blasting away with my auto-winding magazine. But alas, I felt
the BBs impact my face just as I saw a cloud of smoke emitting from the end
of his M203 launcher. The adrenaline rush was so strong that I did not even
hear it. I tripped forward and landed on my head, with the rest of me folding
over and ending with my knees next to my ears. Needless to say, this was a painful
experience but I have to give it to the guy - instead of a blind shootout, he
used his brains and won. As fun as the day game was, though, everyone was already
talking about the night-game - the "main event".

So as the skies darkened, the Koreans spread out and filed into the village
buildings and fortified their positions in preparation for an onslaught by the
Americans. The village itself is pitch-black with no lights during the battle,
and given the cloudy skies, there was little hope for depending on moonlight
for visibility. "Your eyes will adjust and you'll be able to see by the
light of the fires", I was told. Fires? It turned out that the organizers
set fire to all the derelict tanks and APCs around the village to add to the
ambiance of war. In past events, they also broadcasted war sounds through the
loudspeakers to make it all very real. "You know that first scene from
Saving Private Ryan?", asked John and Sarah, a couple who were holding
down the Korean house with me, "well its just like that and your heart
is really thumping, and your adrenaline is rushing". "Maybe its no
big deal for an SAS soldier to hear these loud sounds since they just tune it
out. But for us regular people, that just gets you all worked up and it really
does feel like the real thing". While the instructors did set most of the
vehicles alight into huge blazing bonfires, they failed to play the background
sounds this time due to technical reasons. (Thank you John and Sarah if you
are reading this, for keeping the RedWolf team alive with those delicious chocolate
bars!)

But even without the bonfires, many players were equipped with night vision
goggles (NVGs). Many were also equipped with Tracers so shootouts almost became
a laser show with green or orange bullet-hoses streaking with the chilly winter
night. And as if that wasn't enough, almost everyone carried a flash-bang or
some sort of grenade that lit up the night. According to the organizers, basic
pyrotechnics were allowed. But the fact was that most people carried home-made
grenades that shook the ground and stunned anyone within a 20 foot radius. One
grenade even caused a tree to catch fire and the organizers had to quickly run
over to stamp it out. The rules regarding grenades were simple - if one was
thrown into the room that you occupied and no solid walls stood between yourself
and the explosion, you were automatically out.

This turned out to be a key tactic as the American forces invaded the buildings
one by one. Their approach always came with a full convoy comprising the Humvee,
the Ferret, the APC, and several jeeps and trucks. The first approach landed
them into the center of town which led to their immediate alienation - just
like in Saving Private Ryan. Korean forces played lasers into the APC as the
rear doors opened and shot everyone inside before they even left their seats.
The second invasion was much more thought out and the convoy attacked the perimeter
buildings first, slowly working their way through the entire village. Using
massive spotlights, the Humvee and trucks lit up every hostile window like the
sun, which (1) blinded us Koreans completely, and (2) gave them a clear view
of any heads sticking into the line of fire. This technique kept us from shooting
at all and before we knew it, enemy forces had already accumulated at our doorstep.
Pinned down, all we could do was play our lasers and rifles into the stairwell
to keep them at bay. But a couple of grenades later, we were all wiped out.
Marshals stood on our floor to ensure we called our outs when these grenades
went off.

Fighting until 1am, the objective was to take as many buildings as possible
and have them counted so that we could continue along the same battle lines
in the morning. To indicate wounded fighters, we were each given a glow-stick
which would be taken out of our pockets after we were hit. Flashing a glow-stick
meant that we could avoid being hit as we trudged back to the re-spawn point
at the other end of the village.

Fighting continued in the morning and we continued to shoot it out in and out
of the village, avoiding "drive-by" shootings by armored vehicles
every now and then. Snipers turned out to be a valuable weapon given their 500fps
limit, a good 150fps over the 350fps limit of AEGs. The Glock18C was also very
popular as a room clearing tool - people would stick them around doorways and
corners to shower people hiding under window sills.

The fighting was serious yet fun at the same time. Given the size of the site,
it was difficult to rejoin your unit after you were re-spawned, so many players
would join up with other units based on convenience. It was also a bit difficult
to tell the enemy from friendlies given that we all wore woodland camouflage
attire, which meant that we needed code words to tell who was who. But apart
from all this, it was still a world of fun. The building invasions were lots
of fun and felt like a scene taken from the US TV show "Cops". People
were extremely friendly and while there were occasionally some heated tempers,
everyone remembered it was just a game and made sure not to spoil the fun. Of
course it also helped that there were so many marshals on site to control any
outbreak (28 of them, 1 stationed in every house).

In support of the event, RedWolf Airsoft raffled off numerous T-shirts and
caps, and gave away an RWC SR16 CQB AEG worth USD 600 to a lucky winner. We
had a great time and look forward to going back again in the next year. For
any of you interested in attending a game of such magnificent proportions, we
encourage you to keep your eyes open for the next Sennybridge event and make
your way out to the Queen's country. We promise you won't be disappointed.